New Lady Loggers soccer coach brings experience to the pitch

Jay Forsyth returns 15 years after coaching first Libby boys team

The Libby Loggers girls’ soccer team will take the pitch with a new coach this year, one that carries years of coaching experience at the local level.

Jay Forsyth, a Libby native, was named the new Libby High School girls soccer coach in the spring to succeed Joseph Cik, who retired in 2015 after five years at the helm.

Forsyth is excited with the 15 players attending practices, including a few familiar faces. Forsyth said he’s actually been eyeing the job for years, since he was a U14 coach nearly 15 years ago, although he wasn’t sure it would come to fruition.

“I had a couple of these players on my U14 team and they were really, really promising,” he said. “I told them then that if under any circumstances Joe Cik left, I would immediately take the job. Now I look like a clairvoyant, because that’s exactly what happened.”

Practice first began on Aug. 12, initiating the two-a-day schedule that will last until the team’s first game on Aug. 26 against the Stevensville Yellowjackets. Two-a-days generally include conditioning exercises in the morning, and technical and tactical drills at night.

The team is well balanced between upper and lower classmen, with a strong sense of leadership coming from the older kids, Forsyth said. Although the team is a cooperative with Troy, no Troy players have come out for the girls team.

Picking up a team that finished without a win last year, Forsyth said conditioning is first on the list.

“That’s how you lose a game in the 80th minute,” he said. “You put your head down for a second to get a breather and you lose a goal. As along as we lose to technically and tactically superior teams, then I’m happy. Then I can say we played as hard as we could.”

Despite having the foresight to forecast his future title as head coach of the girls team, Forsyth’s soccer career itself has been hard to predict. His career dates back before Libby even had a soccer program. He played in the Kiwanis youth league and in high school played for a club team based in Creston, British Columbia in Canada. While playing for the Canadian club team, he also coached 10- and 12-year-old kids in his former local Kiwanis league while still in high school.

After graduating in 1993, Forsyth’s ability earned him a spot on the soccer and track team at Gustavus Adolphus College, a NCAA D3 school in St. Peter, Minn.

Forsyth, who developed his game without much of a team structure or organization, said joining the college team was a different vibe from his independent training that got him there.

“It was a little foreign, just because the only organized coaching I had was being in an individual sport, track during high school,” Forsyth said.

In 1998, Forsyth returned to Libby armed with a new outlook on the sport and a more developed skill set. He reached out to two then-minor league teams, the Seattle Sounders and Portland Timbers. Forsyth got the invite to the league combine to try out as a goalie, but his career was cut short by a knee ligament injury sustained during a recreational league game.

“So I decided then I would coach,” he said. “That’s about the only way I could stay involved.

Forsyth signed on as an assistant coach for the first Libby Loggers boys soccer team in 1999. Initially, the team was formed through a club and the school offered some financial assistance. After the first season showed some promise, the Libby district took the sport on as a school-sanctioned team. In the second season, the former head coach John Johnson moved to Whitefish and Forsyth took over as head coach of the boys team.

Forsyth later returned to college to earn a law degree, returned again to Libby and has since been coaching recreation league teams, including U14 and U18 sides.

He said in the 17 years since the Libby soccer program first launched, the small community has reached the level of support seen in some of the best conferences around the state.

“Other than the big cities, where they have massive numbers of players coming out, I would put this program on par with any of the comparable cities in the state,” he said. “It’s a really well-run program; they do it really well here.”

While he said numbers have dwindled since his first coaching gig, he is excited about the team of 15, maybe 18 by the Lady Loggers first game, he’ll field this fall. At the first spring meeting, Forsyth set some expectations for conditioning training through the summer. While conditioning is the first priority, he said technical training should come quickly with a team of young, coachable players.

“I am really pleasantly surprised with how positive they are at practice,” he said. “Sometimes it takes a few weeks to meld together… That happened on the second day. These girls all get along well, they help each other. My upperclassmen have already fallen into that leadership role.”

The Libby Loggers girls soccer team kicks their season off at home against the Stevensville Yellowjackets at noon on Aug. 26 at Logger Stadium.

Reporter Seaborn Larson may be reached at 293-4124 or by email at slarson@dailyinterlake.com.